Basic Glitch
Researcher in the U.S. trying to stay informed and help others stay informed. I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/
I only recently began using ghost, and am slowly figuring things out. Apologies for any formatting issues.
- 26 Posts
- 51 Comments
1·15 hours agoHere is a summary of everything: https://lemm.ee/post/59671562
But tldr for even that: One day last week the governor just declared he was suddenly moving the entire office that handles state emergencies (Governor’s office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness-GOHSEP) under the control of the state’s national guard.
On the same day he also suddenly announced he was Renewing a previous state of emergency that was created by the previous governor to address a cyber attack.
For some unknown reason that nobody has addressed, he added a new section to the renewed executive order that essentially says the director of GOHSEP has authority to do whatever he deems necessary to handle cybersecurity.
Except when he moved GOHSEP to be controlled by the National Guard, he also removed the director of the office and gave him a new title. So there is no actual director.
A member of the National Guard is acting director, so it would appear that the governor basically handed very broad control of cybersecurity to the national guard in a very underhandeded way hoping nobody would notice
Yikes, I knew we had detention centers but didn’t know people were getting shipped here.
Well, I’m here and while there’s plenty of things I don’t like, there’s also things people and places that I love. It makes me angry they’re trying to hide what they’re doing in the shadows in order to destroy something I love even if it wasn’t perfect to begin with. Why should I leave? It’s my world as much as it is theirs.
Actually feel that way about the whole country at this point. Even if I’m powerless to stop you I’m not going to just pretend I don’t see something happening. If there’s any chance for my state or my country that’s what we’re all going to have to do. That’s exactly what “speak out while you still can” means.
This shit is going on all over the place. Louisiana was one of the first, but DOGE has taskforces in 16 states at this point. I’ve actually been considering creating a community to have people start collecting stuff like this across all their states, so that we don’t let this shit keep happening in the dark.
Here it is if anyone wants to join feel free: https://lemm.ee/c/stateleveldoge
Allegedly moving GOHSEP under the National Guard is just a way to save money, as to why it happened on the same day this executive order was signed? No idea because nobody has even brought it up. I only realized it by accident, and only realized that he granted the director of GOHSEP authority because I downloaded the recent executive order and compared it to the old one (which I had to go to archive.org just to find).
But if Moskowitz’s bill passes:
- It puts Louisiana at the mercy of the National Guard and yes seems to greatly increase the chance of the Governor declaring martial law for the state.
With hurricane season there is always the threat of a disaster. It is not unusual for the guard to be called in as a precaution and stick around after a hurricane to enforce curfew.
Even though I personally have not had a bad run in with any guardsman, I think it’s understandable to feel uneasy seeing tanks on the street and guys with guns standing guard when you go to buy groceries. I know I always do, and I don’t even have the negative experiences that many people do to justify it. It would be naive to pretend that there’s not always the possibility things could go wrong.
Usually if a disaster is bad enough for the guard to stick around for a while, that means members of FEMA are also present. While FEMA is by no means an ideal agency in terms of how it should be run, the fact that they have their own dedicated civil rights office within the agency, is very important. Without it, you have armed soldiers being asked to handle crowd control and resources for a huge group of people, often during a time of extraordinary stress for everyone involved. If nobody exists to enforce civil rights, you’re relying on people to maintain them out of the kindness of their hearts. While I like to believe people for the most part will try to do the right thing, I’m not naive enough to believe that’s the case when people are scared and desperate.
- It potentially puts the entire country in the position that Louisiana is now in. If a President decides that he wanted that cabinet position to be placed under the military in a cost savings effort, hopefully it’s a little more difficult to achieve than a governor doing it at a state level, but again, feels a little naive to just assume that.
Most people didn’t even notice that this happened, and I’m not even sure how the governor can do this, but a week ago today it was like he just decided to hold a press conference, say this is what I’m doing, and now that’s the way it is. That’s kind of the problem with unchecked executive authority and letting people see how far they can push things.
So I updated some stuff and yeah this seems very strange. The original order was in 2019 after an attack on some government servers. I had somehow forgotten that in 2023, the government admitted that there had been an ongoing cybersecurity attack on Louisiana OMV data and that essentially every adult in the state had their data breached (it’s been a bit of a hectic year).
2·21 hours agoSo I updated this to reflect more information. I’m not just dumb and this is sheisty.
What is going on?
The governor is a former lawyer, so someone might even suggest it was left intentionally vague?
4·2 days agoLiterally every reference is cited in the post as always, but just to offer the transparency these people claim to love but always avoid:
Office of Homeland Security is making cuts to Civil Rights Offices within the agency for getting in the way on immigration issues. Except the 3 offices being cut are the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (OCRL), the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman.
The OCRL is in charge of all civil rights under Dept. homeland security, not just immigrants. If an American citizen gets detained by homeland security, this is the office that makes sure your rights don’t get violated while in custody and if they do, this is the office you have to go through for FOIA request to document you were even in custody. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/03/homeland-security-makes-cuts-to-offices-overseeing-civil-rights-protections/
However, even with that cut, there is still a civil rights division within the FEMA Office https://www.dhs.gov/office-civil-rights-and-civil-liberties
https://www.fema.gov/about/offices/civil-rights
On the same day the Florida Reps proposed bill was announced to “liberate FEMA”, the secretary of DHS also announced during a live broadcast that DHS was getting rid of FEMA.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5213057-noem-plans-eliminate-fema/
Under the bill, FEMA would be led by a Senate-confirmed director who would answer to the president as a cabinet member instead of being an agency within the Dept. Of Homeland Security.
This would mean DHS makes cuts to it’s main civil rights office and loses the fema branch that handles civil rights under national emergencies.
Meanwhile, DHS, DOD, and DOJ have all announced that they plan to start using polygraphs to smoke out employees leaking information to the press and plan to hand people over to legal authorities if the polygraph leads to finding out sensitive information was leaked, even though polygraphs are not admissible in court. You know, like a violation of due process.
Meanwhile, in the executive power loving state of Louisiana, the governor announced the day before the Pentagon announced they plan to violate due process rights that the state of Louisiana office of Homeland security and emergency planning would now be shifted to be completely controlled by the national guard.
If FEMA is no longer an agency, that means that they do not have the authority to go to a state to aid in anyway without the president’s say so. That means that in Louisiana if there is a national disaster like oh idk a fucking hurricane, there is no longer a federal agency making sure the state national guard doesn’t violate civil rights.
If you’ve ever had the privilege of feeling uneasy seeing tanks rolling down your street and armed guardsmen standing in front of grocery stores during a time when you knew you still had a civil rights office to enforce your rights, then you hopefully understand why this is fucking scary to imagine martial law without any branch of government able protect your civil rights
According to the AP it’s a direct quote from the memo written by the finest legal minds Trump’s money can buy
Damn, I’ve been so distracted with the everything else I didn’t even think of that, but yeah sounds about right.
Little fucking fascists typing up their big scary memos to prove how much they love trampling on rights
Also haven’t heard anyone mentioning this, but late on the Friday before this story was published, Hegseth’s chief of staff sent a late night memo threatening anyone that leaks classified information to the press by saying they’re going to start doing polygraph tests at DOD, and said
“If this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure,” then such information “will be referred to the appropriate criminal entity for criminal prosecution,”
So threatening to turn Department of Defense employees over to the authorities for leaking classified information to reporters if they fail a polygraph (which isn’t even admissible in court bc they give false positives so often).
Then it turns out, oops the guy trying to intimidate everyone texted classified information to a reporter in a group chat and now it’s a story in the Atlantic
I do have face unlock option but it’s showing in settings it’s never been set up. No app permissions I wasn’t aware of except android system intelligence. I tried to switch it to always ask permission but it just disappeared
Yeah I went ahead and just deleted it, but I’m very confused why it’s showing any app associated with that email. It was literally just a throwaway email I used once so I wouldn’t have to use my main account.
When I tried to log in to Google play using that email it said I needed to accept the terms and conditions bc I’d never logged in before.
What’s weird is that’s a throwaway email address I made to sign up for something but never used otherwise. Like I had never actually logged into the playstore with that address
No, I used my lock code
If you don’t want to click the links to the blog post with references explaining all of this
Here is the archived SPN page from 2015 discussing the history: https://web.archive.org/web/20150626172710/http://www.spn.org/about/
Here is a 2011 article discussing the “freedom centers”: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/state-policy-network-union-bargaining/
Here are the SPN affiliate pages for the Alabama and Louisiana think tanks pushing the state level DOGE policy and the SPN affiliate page for the Heritage Foundation:
Louisiana https://spn.org/organization/pelican-institute-for-public-policy/
Alabama https://spn.org/organization/alabama-policy-institute/
Heritage Foundation https://spn.org/organization/heritage-foundation/
3·5 days agoBut… But… If the crew sell their stocks how will the captain be able to jump off the sinking ship and leave them to drown?
Pretty positive there is no actual plan to improve cybersecurity, it’s a facade to quietly hand over power and control to the national guard to keep people in line.
The same day the emergency order was signed by the governor, he announced he was restructuring GOHSEP (governors office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness) under the National guard as part of his state DOGE plan to cut waste and save money.
The emergency order grants the director of GOHSEP authority to act however they seem fit to handle cybersecurity. But on the same day the director of GOHSEP was given a new title, and is no longer director.
The “acting director” is now Louisiana National Guard Brig. Gen. Jason P. Mahfouz